Hey pemasu!
I am writing from a recycled military laptop - an Australian Opentec “OpenFire Series II” which is essentially identical to rokytnji’s American Amrel Rocky II RT686 (drowned), [edit: The British TerraLogic ToughNote Series M (ish),] or the German Roda RT686, circa 2001-2002.

After 2 days of experimenting with installation configurations, and after a string of dead flashdrives (don’t buy generic, folks, for operating system roles) and other hardware checks of ram, cd drive/burn issues, I struck on the working formula:
1) BootFlash Install Puppy to USB
2) Use Plop bootmanager CD, select PCMCIA manager
- I think I also had success with the usual Universal Installer to USB, and then making the first savefile on a more recent laptop *before* moving the flash to bootup on the RT686 - seems to update the savefile appropriately - but unfortunately that series of trials was carried out on dementing/dying drives, so results varied...
So as BootFlash uses the entire drive - no swap partition allowed (and my attempts at resizing the vfat (boo hiss) for a 532mb swap partition have been fails) - can I ask you /community please:
1) How do I make a usable SWAPfile in Upup Precise?
2) Do you think this puplet is the best choice of your recent Upup/dpup series, for this hardware? I tried going through all the threads for info on the issue - including Wary - for something that would give maximum integration with ‘modern’ debian/ubuntu/Puppy apps in this ‘dated’ hardware - but I couldn’t be sure of finding the “sweet spot”.

Apart from some persistent (trivial?) inode errors relating to the ext3-fs that I get on shutdowns despite including “pfix=fschk" in the syslinux.cfg, this version of yours is nonethess fabulous! THANK YOU _________________Toowoomba Linux Community
http://groups.google.com/group/toowoombalinux

Thanks pemasu! Actually I did explore using jpeps' beaut little application, and I managed to create a swapfile with it - about 512MB, which I guess might be less-than-optimal? Too big? Anyway, Upup precise 372 seemed to load it fine, I set swappiness to about 60, and closed down. Bit alarmed at the screens and screens of inode errors that were generated, but after the automatic fschk in syslinux.cfg, Upup was up and running without problem. However, I've never seen like it - was if the swapfile manager had been spat out without a trace - not listed as a user-installed application, and only the swapfile remained. I looked for it beforehand and didn't find a pre-existing swapfile, but perhaps I was mistaken.

Thank you very much indeed for posting the script for creating a swapfile - I will use that, but is there something like Conky I might use to see how effective a certain-sized swapfile etc might be, under normal operation?
Thanks again,
Puppyt_________________Toowoomba Linux Community
http://groups.google.com/group/toowoombalinux

Puppyt. I just showed you the part of the rc.shutdown script. You need to edit rc.shutdown script, dont use that copy - pasted part of that script. I was just the example what part of rc.shutodwn script you should try to edit.

About effectiveness of swap file. I dont have any experience of it or usage of it. I use mostly hdd frugal installations with dedicated swap partition...which is usually not in usage. I have 4 Gb Ram in my main app. Anyway....I still obediently create swap partition to every machine which I use.

Just downloaded and installed Upup Precise 3.7.2 to a CD-RW, then to flash drive.
I don't impress easy and I'm sort of understated.

I'm impressed.

All the subtle extra attention to detail really shines thru. Can't wait to put the petal to the metal and see what it can do.

Wow! I think I have found a keeper for my flash drive.
Might even work out great for Android Kernel and app development (I might need a bigger Flash drive for ROM development though).

I'm now forced to read every post in this thread to get a jump on some of it's capabilities.
My old 2003 machine thanks you as well.

EDIT: I'm not sure which ndiswrapper you used with this kernel, but there is a new ndiswrapper_1.58-Ubuntu which would work great with this kernel. Have used it on Debian distro with compatible kernel even though it is a ndiwrapper-Ubuntu, worked fine (better than the 1.57-Debian)

Funny I should have mentioned ndiswrapper.
Edit:
I thought there was no ndiswrapper when I got a modprobe fatal error for the first time with a Puppy distro. Maybe the kernel is not compatible with the older version of ndiswrapper.
I'll try the 1.58-Ubuntu first. Should work? If I can remember how to install a pkg with a terminal from a Puppy distro (Xubuntu it's dpkg -i <name of pkg>).

Downloading this one and 3.8.4.2 raring, (I need non pae kernel), version for my good Amrel RT 786 EX.
It will go on the hard drive. Will post back later on how it goes. [u]That one did not
get wet[/u] and is fully functional Pentium 4 , 512MB ram, 3 hard drive (2 xtras), 3 battery (2 xtras) , 2 cdrom (1 extra) 2 floppy drive (1 xtra) laptop.

I have 1 gutted RT 686 EX rocky II ,with I think either, 500 Mhz or 800 Mhz processor
with a passive touch screen included (you can use your finger)
It has 256MB of ram (2 128iMB sticks). No battery, AC adapter, I can use the a/c adapter from the RT 786
to check the bios on the RT 686 for specs. No hard drive or caddy box either. I cannibalized those
parts for the RT 786 EX.

Other issues. include water damage on internals. But the RT 686 still powers on and
I got lighthouse 5.03 to run on it last time I tested it after the flood damage. The other RT 686 (I had 3 Amrel Laptops) made it into the dumpster. It would not post to bios. Ram and Hard drive caddy and blank cdrom caddy (no cdrom drive or ribbon connector plug for caddy. Just the blank plastic box that inserts into laptop slot)

Batteries are lion batteries that can be cut out from battery caddy and cordless drill lion batteries will work (if right size). If you have a busted drill, a dremel cutting tool, and super glue. I did this once before. Fix lasted a little over a year .

Ndiswrapper is kernel module driver. You cant use Ubuntu ones with my build. Different kernel.

Thanks, been chasing my tail around trying to get the ndiswrapper module to compile.

Question: Why is make not an installed package? This is one of the one's you think would have been included (along with get).

Edit: Coming to you live from Upup Precise 3.7.2, brought to you by Seamonkey.
That did the trick.

Maybe you could include the ndiswrapper driver in the OP. Next pup that needs it will find it quicker.
I usually don't have problems at all with Puppy, Was just going to set up my network then read the rest of this thread. Silly me! What was I thinking. Lol

AndyOpie150. I move around with kernels....so not all my builds have all the usual kernel module drivers. Mostly they have. Ndiswrapper had that initial problem with my kernel source and I didnt find the solution until I had already uploaded the build.

Let`s see if I create another build of Upup Precise 3.7.2. I would like to....but there are so many builds to update for me.

About make. Puppy creates devx sfs for make...gcc...and for other compiling needs. That is the way woof2 and Puppies works. Not much idea to change that. I use woof2 building system....and differing from it means that you are on your own. My time does not give possibility to do that. Devx sfs is the way to have compiling environment.

...
Just doing this for Puppyt and myself to see about whether both work or not OK on these toughbooks.

Cheers rok - I appreciate that very much. I saw your post as I was just browsing the forums for ideas on how to best get around some installation problems on the RT686 (glad to see that you only lost one Amrel due to flooding - hope that your world is getting back to normal after such a tragedy - old computers being the least of your worries). Hmmm the usbflash was giving more and more inode errors on shutdown, and pfix=fschk in the bootup (syslinux.cfg?) wasn't cutting it. So I prepared a usb caddy with a 30GB hdd, did the format to ext3 plus 500mb swap partition, blah blah but I can't seem to get the PLOP manager to read the PCMCIA (usb2) HDD as I did before with the flash- although that was prepared with BootFlash. Gotta go to bed - making stupid mistakes I reckon and its' just past midnight here. Was hoping to have frugal installs of both preciseretro543 and Upup precise372 on the caddy, but not to be. Will have to suck up and buy some hdd caddies for these things,
Hoo-roo_________________Toowoomba Linux Community
http://groups.google.com/group/toowoombalinux

ebay was another place that worked for me but it is like hunting in the outback
I guess. Some days nothing then patience pays off.

I bought those caddies years ago so Amrel might tell you they don't stock
that antique stuff anymore. Mine were used when they mailed them to me.
Not new oem. The bios update is not a cure all for usb boot either.

I still had to use PLOP boot manager Floppy disk even after the bios update.
I never tried it with a external cabled usb hard drive. Just pendrives .

That 3.8 upup install went OK. I am busy with outside work for the next few days so
that is going to sit on the back burner for now. Been a busy year online and offline
for me.

I have noticed a few bugs:
Volume Icon is missing on most boot ups (I did see it once) and the mixer app does not open.
Sometimes the menu would flicker and not open.
When copying files from another flash drive or a partition it some times would work and some times not (would occasionally just move the file before I got a chance to select any action).

I did check the md5 sum before burning .iso to a CD.
My flash drive was formatted to ext.3 before install.
I guess the pentium 4 processor in my 2003 SONY VAIO All in one Desktop just doesn't get along with this kernel.

Well.......I'm exhausted from chasing my tail.
I was just hoping to set up a build environment for my Android device (mostly kernels and apps) and run it off of a flash drive. Puppy Precise seemed like the best choice.
Trying to figure out how to do just one simple task is taking to much time, research and multitudes of dead ends in the CLi. What is easy to accomplish in Windows and Linux seem near impossible to accomplish in Puppy.

The only thing that went right was installing the latest Java jdk6.
The Android SDK and ADB, which is a key for the rest of what I need to install and configure leaves me frustrated to no end.

I'm sure once one has spent considerable time with Puppy, and has learned how to accomplish needed tasks in the CLI and such that it is a really good distro, but it is too different from what I know.
It's like working only on Chevy's then trying to learn how to work on a Ford. Two totally different mind sets.

I still like Puppy (Puppy Slacko is my favorite), just won't be using it for Android development like I was hoping.

EDIT: After a lot of searching, downloading, and installing it would appear as though Puppy is the only linux distro that will allow an install onto a ext.3 formatted flash drive.
So I guess I'm going to be not only learning how to get things done, but I will need to learn how to make SFS files and maybe even Puppy derivatives to accomplish my goal of a total Android development environment on a USB flash drive.

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